B&G REPORT.

Many years ago, when we were first introduced to the world of performance management, we became zealots, believing that cities and states...

Every government makes mistakes from time to time. Sometimes, leaders acknowledge that a decision made in the past has gone awry and other times this news comes out through a performance audit or a press report. But as Robert Half, the late founder of the eponymous giant recruiting firm once said, “Not admitting a mistake is a bigger mistake.” We agree and yet we frequently see state and local governments and their leaders take that unfortunate path. Consider citizen surveys.

When was the last time you heard anyone say, “Gee what an excellent bureaucracy we have in the Department of Motor Vehicles. It only took...

For some time, we’ve been fascinated by the relationship between executive branch managers and their legislatures or city councils. Not...

Way back in 2015, we wrote a cover story for Governing  about bad data. (And by the way, we’re delighted to report that after a few...

We’ve never really understood the way horoscopes work. How can it be that if someone is born a minute after midnight on October 24th,...

A few months ago, at the American Society for Public Administration conference in Washington D.C., the Center for Accountability and...

Today is “World Social Media Day,” a celebration of that form of communications that was first proclaimed in 2010 by Mashable, a media...

Many states, counties and city leaders are regularly raging against “fraud, waste and abuse.” This is hardly a new issue but inspired by...

We don’t have a degree in statistics. Nor are we data specialists. But after 30-plus years of using data as a basic tool in our quest to...

Today is the first day of Public Service Recognition Week and since much of our readership is made up by people who have devoted their...

Over the last few months, we’ve written extensively about Artificial Intelligence. Mostly we’ve been focusing on the usual issues; its...

Generally speaking, we see the positives in the world in which we live. We’re grateful for our work, family, and one another. Right now,...

Last week, in a B&G Report titled, “Information Can Be a Buried Treasure,” we wrote about our concerns about the use of artificial...

A few weeks after we left our then-18-year-old son off at the University of North Carolina in 2005, we got a note from him, thoroughly...

More than ten years ago, leaders in West Haven, Connecticut (where the Greene of Barrett and Greene grew up), began planning a fabulous...

Nearly every city, county or state gathers huge quantities of data for a variety of purposes. Some of it is effectively used, some is...

Recently, we were involved in a project that involved reaching out to dozens of officials in cities across the United States.  As you...

For years, we’ve been writing about the importance of good data, based upon which states, counties and cities can make good decisions....

Over the course of the years, we’ve happily written about scores (probably hundreds) of reports that are focused on broad areas of state...